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Robert Heilbroner, the economic historian, in his thought-provoking look at the past in order to get a glimpse of the future ("21st Century Capitalism"; W. W. Norton & Co, New York, 1993), begins with the following quote from a Russian medievalist: "History teaches nothing, but only punishes for not learning its lessons." I think this principle is relevant to our work on the informal sector. Many lessons from past experience are there; but we will have to dig them out. They will not teach themselves to us spontaneously or automatically.
The ILO launched the concept of the informal sector three decades ago. Since then, it has done more work on both the concept and the underlying social problem than any other single institution. This paper documents the institutional history of this thirty years of effort. Starting with a brief account of the informal sector's historical roots in the development thinking of the 1950s and 1960s, Bangasser traces its conceptual development through the 1970s and its gradual dispersion and then absorption into the evolving development paradigm of the 1980s and 1990s. He also looks at the role of the informal sector in the ILO as it enters the new millennium. The paper ends by casting an eye over "some roads not taken", and why. The annex material is also interesting. Here we find listed all the different work items on the informal sector in the ILO's regular budget since 1969. There is also the "Director General's Reply" in 1991 to the international debate on the informal sector at the International Labour Conference. Also annexed is the formal Resolution concerning Statistics on Employment in the Informal Sector adopted by the International Conference of Labour Statisticians in 1993, which was then incorporated into the newly revised System of National Accounts.
The informal sector is still central to ILO's mandate of social justice. Whatever we call it, unorganised sector or informal economy or something else, we will be working on the informal sector in the future, as we have in the past. And, indeed, so we should. It behoves us, however, and our constituents to ensure that these efforts are, to use Amartya Sen's provocative phrase, "well deliberated". We should ensure that this continuing informal sector work learns from and grows out of the extensive experience from the past. We should make the effort to learn the lessons from history. This paper will help us do that.
To learn from history, we must know it. Over the past three decades, the ILO has been both the midwife and the principal international institutional home for the concept of the informal sector. As we enter the next millennium, with a new Director General and a refocused mandate on "decent work" and an increased emphasis on to the marginalised and the excluded, it seems timely to pause and look back. Over these past thirty odd years, how has this institution wrestled with the informal sector, both as a concept and as a painful reality for our constituents? Where did this concept come from? How has the ILO dealt with it over the years, with what successes ... and what failures?
Despite these three decades of work, the informal sector is still a topic which elicits diverging views, sometimes passionately so, about how to define it, how to measure and to classify it, and especially about how to respond to it. There is even debate on what to call it (2). There is little divergence now, however, that the informal sector exists and will be with us for the foreseeable future. This consensus is in large measure the result of these three decades of ILO's effort both to develop the concept of the informal sector and to implant it into the development paradigm. In this paper, I focus on recording the institutional history of this effort rather than on the concept itself.
The concept of the informal sector has itself evolved over these years. My intention, however, is neither to trace that conceptual evolution nor to explore its current state. That is a sufficiently broad topic on its own to merit taking up separately. In this paper, I concentrate on the bureaucratic or institutional history of the ILO and the informal sector. How did the International Labour Office, as a large international and also bureaucratic institution (with both the strengths and the weaknesses these characteristics entail) respond to a concept and an economic reality which is both central to the institution's core mandate of social justice and at the same time foreign to its traditionally understood tripartite constituency and institutional culture?
The "official record" of an institution is just the skeleton of its history. Each officially recorded event is done (or left undone), supported (or opposed) by real people. An institutional history, then, should also include this sometimes collaborative and sometimes conflictual but always complex human interaction of the people actually involved in these events. In the following pages, I have tried to provide an account not just of the official events by the formal institutional ILO, but also some of the human environment and the professional context within which these events took place. For some of these, I was a participant; for many others, they happened "just down the hall" and I knew personally the officials who were involved. So what follows includes an element of personal memoir. Many of those who participated in these events are no longer around; but some are. Perhaps they will also add their memoirs to the story. This would be useful, since no one sees the whole story. Knowledge is cumulative; and a full picture only emerges when official records and personal recollections are pooled. I think those responsible for carrying the mantle of the informal sector into the next millennium would be enriched by these contributions.
I have organised this institutional history into three phases, corresponding to the three decades shown along the time line in Figure 1. The decade of the 1970s I have called the incubation years, when the concept of the informal sector was developed and took root. The decade of the 1980s were the years when this concept was taken up by many different actors and incorporated into their respective programmes. During the decade of the 1990s, the concept of the informal sector achieved international recognition and was incorporated into the official international schema.
While the phrase "informal sector" came onto the development scene in 1972, its roots reach back into the economic development efforts of the 1950s and 1960s. That was a time of confidence and optimism. With the surprisingly successful rebuilding of Europe and Japan following the Second World War, there seemed no reason why a similar sort of deliberate economy-building effort could not also be applied to the newly emerging countries in the de-colonialising Third World.
The "Cold War" added political motivation for "helping" the Third World in this development process; but the ethos was essentially technical. Whether the model of preference was Raul Prebisch's "center vs. periphery" (1949) or Arthur Lewis' "unlimited supplies of labour" (1954) or Harvey Leibenstein's "big push" (1957) or W. W. Rostow's "stages of economic growth" (1960) (3), the method of argumentation was virtually always the same. The subject was material well being, indicated by measurable income per capita. The conceptual tools were taken overwhelmingly from economic science, and with a strong preference for "positive" rather than "normative" economics. And the logic was applied "universally" across the spectrum of "developing countries", with little allowance or variation for their evident differences in size, history, cultures, natural endowments, etc.
With the "right" kind of macroeconomic policies, supporting institutions and enough development assistance resources, generating a sustained growth of per capita incomes was a technically feasible objective and attainable within an acceptable time frame, ... if the political will was there. Obviously any poor, traditional, stagnant country would want to transform itself into a growing, dynamic, "modern" one. Therefore, while there would certainly be some interim tensions and structural dislocations, the political will could be assumed. The core issue thus became one of "managing" this economic transition process. Within this mind-set, various cultural or political changes didn't seem essential "before the fact". These could be left to follow.
This technical ethos towards development was especially strong in UN Specialised Agencies like the ILO. It allowed them a measure of protection from Cold War political crossfire without undercutting either their raison d'être nor their universality. Also, it gave them something attractive to offer a new (and usually poor) member State which respected its new sovereignty. Whichever Cold War "camp" the new nation chose, the ILO (or UNIDO or UNESCO or FAO or WHO) could "help" it with its development efforts.
But these efforts and this transition process had to be managed carefully, so development planning was all the fashion. There were variations, of course. Some called for comprehensive compulsory planning along the lines of the Soviet 5 year plans. Others advocated a "commanding heights" development strategy based on a carefully planned public sector control over basic industry and perhaps one or two "key" export products. Even the advocates of "indicative planning" considered that some kind of deliberately orchestrated coordination of public efforts for development was needed. And each "planning model" has its Cold War orientation: socialist, "non-aligned" or "free world".
One of the technical areas which obviously needed to be planned, and an area where the ILO claimed competence among international organisations, was manpower. (4) A separate technical branch within the Office existed for this topic, the Manpower Planning and Organisation Branch (MPO), which was part of the Human Resources Development Department.
This department also included Vocational Training (VTB) and Management Development (ManDev) branches. These two were the "big guns" of ILO technical cooperation in those days. Each had built up a substantial portfolio of "institution building" projects to establish vocational training and management and productivity centres throughout most of the developing world. With generous extra-budgetary funding, mainly from the then new UNDP, these two programmes had grown dramatically during these two decades. By focussing on providing the human resources needed for whichever kind of planning the receiving country chose, the ILO could help any member State regardless of its political orientation.
As part of the same Human Resources Department, the Manpower Planning Branch shared in this growth, but to a smaller degree, since by its nature the planning of human resource needs requires smaller staffs and less glamourous facilities than their actual provision. It was here in the manpower planning function that the lacuna in contemporary development theory came into focus. The numbers didn't match!
Even using very favourable assumptions about investment and productivity growth, the number of jobs being created was way short of the projected demand. There were many fewer "modern" jobs than there were people wanting to fill them. Furthermore, many people were often working outside the framework of their official or planned "work". Some who were not officially not "working" at all were in fact economically busy. This came to be called "informal employment", in other words economic activity which was outside the framework of the official plan. These activities took many forms; "moonlighting" by poorly paid civil servants, cottage industry activities of persons officially "working" as collectivised farmers, or whatever. Urban migration was also a growing phenomenon; and in the urban setting this gulf between the "planned employment" and the visible reality was especially evident. Increasingly large numbers of people were obviously economically active; but what they were doing did not appear in the plan and so, de facto, neither did they.
Official reaction on the part of both national authorities and the international development community to these "escapees" from the national development plan was mixed; sometimes open hostility, sometimes benign indifference, but virtually never positive encouragement, and certainly not assistance. It was axiomatic that, as "take off" was achieved and the development process gained momentum, the "modern sector" would gradually absorb them. So the "problem" was only temporary. The important thing was not to get distracted from the "big push" of investment and related development efforts to get to sustained growth. So both these "escapees" and their "informal activities" (which wasn't really "work", anyway) were either actively discouraged or at least ignored. This attitude also fitted well with ILO's big vocational training and management development programmes. "Informal employment" was clearly not what the graduates of these institutions were being prepared for.
But the "temporary problem" didn't go away; it got worse. An increasingly large and visible "modern jobs gap" could not be ignored. Demographic trends plus seemingly unstoppable urban migration meant that ever increasing numbers of people were entering the urban labour market, which was the modern sector par excellence. The levels of capital investment needed to generate "modern sector" jobs to absorb them were simply not in the cards, even under the most optimistic assumptions about both domestic saving and foreign investment. By the middle to late 1960s, unemployment was clearly not responding to the planned development efforts as it was supposed to. And this was in spite of significant efforts, and successes, in areas like capital formation, infrastructure investments, human resources development, etc. Something had to give.
The ILO's response to this increasingly evident paradox was the World Employment Programme. The WEP emerged as a proposal in 1967 at the Americas Regional Conference in Ottawa. It quickly found a strong echo among constituents, and then was formally endorsed and launched in Geneva at the 1969 international labour conference. Its main thrust was to bring the issue of employment generation into the center of the national planning and development efforts as an explicit policy objective in its own right, instead of leaving it as a residual and eventual consequence of "successful" development efforts.
Today, this may sound pretty obvious. But in the thinking of the 1960s, the centre stage of attention was capital formation, export promotion and the like. The conventional wisdom considered that employment would grow as a result of advances in these areas. Leave the labour market alone to function "efficiently"; and supply and demand will "clear" at the "equilibrium" wage rate. Any concern about the low level of this "equilibrium wage" should be addressed by making sure that this labour is, on the supply side, well and appropriately skilled and, on the demand side, productively used. (Ergo, vocational training to ensure useful and up-to-date skills, and management development to make sure these skills were put to good effect in efficient enterprises). There may be some "social stresses" during the adjustment periods and the "take off" stage, but these will fade as sustained growth takes hold and the modern urban sector gradually expands to absorb any displaced from the rural and traditional sectors. To be sure, this "residual self-regulating labour market" thesis never sat well with much of the ILO community, both within the Office and among the constituents (especially on the workers group side). But it was a widely held view among respectable mainstream economists; and economists tended to dominate the development debate.
The WEP was, in effect, a direct attack on this conventional economists' wisdom. The basic WEP counter thesis was that employment should be seen as a central component of development efforts, not as an eventual result of them. It should figure prominently both at the planning as well as the implementation stages and at the macro as well as the micro levels. Full and productive and freely chosen employment should be brought into the development process as an explicit and unifying leitmotif, to be pursued as socially and economically desirable in itself, and as a theme which gives other development efforts their societal justification, not vice versa.
That thesis still seems relevant today, ... and still in need of promotion.
To get the WEP rolling, the old Manpower Planning and Organisation branch (MPO) was moved out of the Human Resources Development Department and elevated to a department in its own right, the Employment Planning and Promotion Department (EPPD). The new department had three branches, each with its corresponding focus; research, sectoral employment projects, and comprehensive employment planning missions. This third branch had the mandate of organising large multi-disciplinary "comprehensive employment missions" of up to two months duration to specific requesting countries.
These comprehensive missions were quite an innovation at the time. Not only did they represent a new focus for development efforts, namely employment; they also constituted a different approach to technical assistance. First, much more attention, and consequently most of the resources went into analysis and diagnosis rather than remedial activities, as had been the case for most technical cooperation projects to date. Indeed, the whole thrust of a comprehensive employment mission was to analyse and to recommend rather than to implement. Second, each mission was not only multi-disciplinary but also made up of experts from many institutions, not just the ILO. Academics, officials from other international organisations, specialists from national universities and research institutes, trade unions, employers organisations, management consultancy organisations - considerable effort went into making these teams not just technically but also culturally and institutionally heterogeneous. Effort was also invested in making sure each team had an unbiased perspective. There was no linkage between either past or pending technical assistance projects. Nor were the missions to be constrained with the amount of development assistance funds currently available, like a sort of portfolio programming exercise. The whole idea was to give the requesting government the best possible analysis of its current employment challenge, in all its many facets, and to leave the national authorities with the broad outline of a coherent strategy as to how they could respond to this challenge.
Each mission typically consisted of up to twenty-five to thirty recognised experts in a variety of specialisations and from a variety of institutions, some local or national and some international. After careful preparation and planning by the ILO and the national counterpart organisation (usually the national planning authority), which included not only the physical and logistical preparation but also the assembly of as much background information and data as possible, the mission would gather in the receiving country and spend up to two months or more working closely with all the different national actors in the national development effort. The output would be a comprehensive national employment plan, parallel or tandem to the national development plan, usually embodied in a general report. Each mission also typically produced a number of technical or working papers on specific themes.
The echo from this initiative by the Office was generally quite positive. In addition to a sort of macroeconomic "employment audit", these missions also provided national authorities a well-grounded mosaic for coordinating and planning various specific development projects. Donors liked the broad-based and insightful analyses. Other academics and students of development liked the drawing together into a single consolidated place what had previously been rather disbursed information and data.
But these comprehensive missions also suffered from some design flaws. First, while the ILO officially sponsored and organised them, the missions themselves and especially the content of their findings and recommendations were considered the responsibility of the team leaders and, to a lesser extent, its members. There was no official ILO endorsement of either the report(s) or the recommendations. When the idea of such comprehensive missions was developed, this autonomy was seen mainly as a way to ensure that each team had an unbiased perspective and was free to draw the conclusions and make the recommendations which sprang naturally from its analysis. But the effect was also to mean little institutional commitment to follow-up, especially once team members returned to their respective organisations and jobs when the mission was over. Second, donors liked the idea of the missions in general, and supported them financially and used their findings in their respective project programming activities. But there was no institutional change in the way in which development assistance funds were allocated to programmes and then into specific projects. This process has easily a three- to five-year time frame. So, in effect, donor resources were provided for the missions themselves (which were, to be sure, expensive but far less so than the called for follow-up) but no provision was made for any additional project funding above the levels already set, and programmed. So any fresh projects to follow-up on the recommendations of the comprehensive missions had to compete with existing projects or with proposals already in the pipeline. In short, the missions tended to raise expectations for subsequent assistance which later proved financially impossible to satisfy.
Those follow-up flaws could have been resolved; but there were deeper problems which only became visible from the vantage point of hindsight. While the missions were a true innovation in their day, and were undertaken in genuine good faith, today we would probably consider them both too "technocratic" and too "culturally insensitive". At the time, bringing in a group of "high-level experts" to figure out in a few weeks how to address a pervasive social and economic problem which had been festering for years seemed reasonable. Today, this strategy sounds a bit naive. Can a "high level international expert" understand a problem or an issue better than the local people who live with it every day? He or she may have broader knowledge about how similar issues are addressed in other countries; but does that broader international knowledge translate into a valid comparative advantage for figuring out how to solve that problem within the intricacies of the local situation? Second, six to eight weeks in a country is barely enough to get adjusted to the local food, let alone to get a feel for how to approach complex social issues like employment.
Third, and perhaps most fundamentally, this whole approach was still well within the "technocratic ethos" mentioned earlier; and within this ethos, economics was by far the "dominant" discipline, to the effect that these missions used nearly exclusively technocratic and economic "lenses", predominantly imported, to conduct their analyses and to formulate and argue their recommendations, with only a shallow grounding in the local cultural or political or social institutional context. Whereas it had originally been planned that the participation of various local "experts" in the work of these missions would allow to circumvent this pitfall, in the event the international cadre of the missions tended to enjoy higher prestige than their local counterparts and, being away from their other responsibilities, were more "100%" into the work of the mission. (The important exception to this pattern is the concept of the informal sector and the mission to Kenya, as I describe below.) Also, without exception the team leaders were economists of "high level international standing" (and all men, no women!); and the reports and documentation were finalised at ILO headquarters in Geneva. So these comprehensive employment missions in fact remained well within the then dominant technocratic ethos and economics perspective of the late 1960s.
For whatever reasons, by the middle to late 1970s, the "bloom was off the rose" for comprehensive employment missions. While some missions continued to be organised into the early 1980s, more and more of the mandate for assisting member States to formulate their employment oriented development strategies passed to the regional employment teams (PREALC, ARTEP, JASPA and SARTEP, which along with other technical regional teams became the nuclii for the current MDTs) (5). Nevertheless, and however we may look back upon them with the advantage of hindsight, these comprehensive employment missions had a significant impact on the ILO and the WEP. In the first place, they brought the ILO into public attention in areas where it had not previously seemed largely irrelevant. National development planning, macro-economic themes such as fiscal policy and taxation, technology policy, sectoral and regional development, etc. were areas in which the ILO had something to offer, but had not so far been very successful in getting the ear of either local authorities or the development community. Finally, the missions brought into the Office a number of talented persons whose careers would otherwise probably not have brought them this way. Some of them stayed on and have made substantial contributions to the life of the institution.
And, of course, it was the comprehensive employment mission to Kenya in 1972 that gave us the concept of the informal sector.
The Kenya mission, in 1972, was the first comprehensive employment mission to Africa. It took place in the missions' "glory days", and enjoyed both the strengths and weaknesses described above. But undoubtedly one of its most lasting legacies has been the concept of the informal sector.
In the Kenya report (6), "Employment, incomes and equality", not only was the phrase "informal sector" coined; but this concept played a key role in the whole analysis of the employment situation. Chapter 13 of the report is devoted entirely to the informal sector. A separate section of the initial summary and recommendations is on the informal sector. Technical paper 22 is on "the relationship between the formal and informal sectors". And throughout the various other chapters and sections, separate comments and observations are included on the formal and informal sectors.
This report played a seminal role for the concept of the informal sector. Even today, it is hard to find a better definition or description of it, nor a better analysis of why it is an important contribution to the development dialogue. So the following somewhat long extract from the report's introduction seems appropriate:-
"The problem with employment is that the statistics are incomplete, ... omitting a range of wage earners and self-employed persons, male as well as female, in what we term 'the informal sector'.
"The popular view of informal sector activities is that they are primarily those of petty traders, street hawkers, shoeshine boys and other groups 'under-employed' on the streets of the big towns. The evidence presented in Chapter 13 of the report suggest that the bulk of employment in the informal sector, far from being only marginally productive, is economically efficient and profit-making, though small in scale and limited by simple technologies, little capital and lack of links with the other ('formal') [sic] sector. Within the latter part of the informal sector are employed a variety of carpenters, masons, tailors and other tradesmen, as well as cooks and taxi-drivers, offering virtually the full range of basic skills needed to provide goods and services for a large though often poor section of the population.
"Often people fail to realise the extent of economically efficient production in the informal sector because of the low incomes received by most workers in the sector. A common interpretation of the cause of these low incomes (in comparison to average wage levels in the formal sector) [sic] has been to presume that the problem lies within the informal sector; that it is stagnant, non-dynamic, and a net for the unemployed and for the thinly veiled idleness into which those who cannot find formal wage jobs must fall. It is hardly surprising that this view should be widespread, for academic analysts have often encouraged and fostered such an interpretation. Further, from the vantage point of central Nairobi, with its gleaming skyscrapers, the dwellings and commercial structures of the informal sector look indeed like hovels. For observers surrounded by imported steel, glass and concrete, it requires a leap of the imagination and considerable openness of mind to perceive the informal sector as a sector of thriving economic activity and a source of Kenya's future wealth. But throughout the report we shall argue that such an imaginative leap and openness of mind is not only necessary to solve Kenya's employment problem, but is entirely called for by the evidence about the informal sector. There exists, for instance, considerable evidence of technical change in the urban informal sector, as well as of regular employment at incomes above the average level attainable in smallholder agriculture. The informal sector, particularly in Nairobi but to varying degrees in all areas, has been operating under extremely debilitating restrictions as a consequence of a pejorative view of its nature. Thus there exists an imminent danger that this view could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Later, we explain how employment in the informal sector has grown in spite of obstacles and lack of outside support: the evidence suggests that employment has probably increased a good deal faster in the informal than in the formal sector. It is therefore impossible to judge how the employment problem has changed merely from the data on employment in the formal sector.
"Our analysis lays great stress on the pervasive importance of the link between formal and informal activities. We should therefore emphasise that informal activities are not confined to employment on the periphery of the main towns, to particular occupations or even to economic activities. Rather, informal activities are the way of doing things, characterised by -
(a) ease of entry;
(b) reliance on indigenous resources;
(c) family ownership of enterprises;
(d) small scale of operation;
(e) labour-intensive and adapted technology;
(f) skilled acquired outside the formal school system; and
(g) unregulated and competitive markets.
"Informal sector activities are largely ignored, rarely supported, often regulated and sometimes actively discouraged by the Government."
Chapter 13 and Technical Paper 22 in the body of the report go on to develop and to substantiate these statements in the introduction. Yet this extract above continues to be an excellent and succinct statement both as to what the informal sector is and, especially, why it is an important conceptual tool for understanding and affecting the development process. It touches virtually all the issues which this new concept stirred up. Today, over a quarter of a century and several library shelves of research later, the evidence over these years has emphatically confirmed this report's perspicacity, even though some of these issues are still disputed.
It also seems important note how positive the report is about the informal sector, its efficiency, its innovativeness, its resilience. This is in rather sharp contrast to the "miserabilist" attitude which is now so prevalent towards the sector.
Before putting down the Kenya report, an additional comment is in order. Slipped in as a footnote, the report acknowledges that the informal sector idea originated not with the high-level foreign "development experts" brought in for the mission but from the work and the staff of the Institute or Development Studies of the University of Nairobi, a fact which has been generally forgotten since then. In other words, it was not the ILO which invented the concept of the informal sector. It came out of the thinkers and analysts of the Third World. The ILO basically picked it up and gave it broader currency. This fact may help explain why the concept was rather slow to be accepted in the high levels of the Development Set but quickly embraced by the Third World itself..
Parallel to the comprehensive employment missions, The World Employment Programme also had a research programme with a number of specific themes, one of which was urban unemployment. While this research theme had begun in 1968 and 1969 (its first publication was Paul Bairoch's ground-breaking study on Urban Unemployment in Developing Countries, in 1971), it only really got rolling with the arrival of Harold Lubell in October 1971. He began a series of metropolitan city-specific studies, beginning with Calcutta, which emphasised field surveys and the collection of original data to supplement available information. In September 1973, S. V. Sethuraman joined Lubell.
While neither of the two was a member of the Kenya mission, their urban unemployment research programme is where the concept took root and blossomed. They incorporated in the methodology for their initial series of metropolitan city studies, and in a second phase as the focue os a series of urban informal sector city studies. The programme became "the urban informal sector research programme". The concept was a handy way to simplify linguistic complications of defining "disguised unemployment", "hidden versus open under-employment", etc. Someone in the informal sector was understood to be "economically active" somewhere between holding down a "good job" in the formal sector and hanging idly around the town square waiting to get hired. It also offered language which both up-dated and nuanced the "modern vs. traditional" and "rural vs. urban" duologies. We now also had a "formal vs. informal" axis.
But these benefits came with some costs. First, they cast the notion of informality into an exclusively urban context. This was not illogical; since this research programme was directed at the urban setting, and its managers logically called it the urban informal sector. But what about the rural setting? Does "informality" also exist there? How does it differ from the urban context? These questions about relevance and applicability of the informal sector to rural contexts were only systematically addressed later, after the informal sector as an urban phenomenon had been established. To some extent, the urban - rural split was bridged in 1974, when the whole WEP Research programme was reorganised (see the next section). However, it is still a source of professional divergences and potential confusion. Does the informal sector cover rural as well as urban situations; and, if so, what are the differences, if any?
Second, as an "employment" issue in the development debate, the informal sector was not seen as relevant to other policy areas such as public sector investment, export promotion, infrastructure development, etc. Also, since "good jobs" axiomatically belonged to the formal sector, those working in the informal sector were assumed to be there because they couldn't find a better alternative (ie., in the formal sector). So the informal sector came to be seen as a sort of labour market sump, where those who missed (for whatever reasons) getting one of the "good jobs" of the formal sector ended up. As regards the broad development strategy, the informal sector was still just an unpleasant but passing labour market phenomenon which had to be suffered through but would eventually fade away. (Does this "big push", "take off" thinking sound familiar?) So, the informal sector soon picked up the bleak hue of a "last resort" sector of "dead end" employment, which was just what the Kenya Report feared, a pejorative official view that perpetuates debilitating conditions and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of low productivity and poverty and but ignores the creative potential and energies of the informal sector.
For all its strengths and weaknesses, the urban unemployment research programme, under the direction of Harold Lubell and then S. V. Sethuraman, carried the concept of the informal sector onto the Development Scene.
Initially, even within the ILO the concept was not embraced with immediate and universal enthusiasm. For example, it did not figure in the conceptual framework of subsequent comprehensive missions (e.g., Iran, The Philippines).
The WEP and the Employment Department itself went through a major structural reorganisation at the end of 1974. The new structure was based on technical theme (rural development, technological choice, income distribution, urban migration, etc.) rather than means of action (i.e., research, comprehensive missions, and sectoral projects), the idea being to link operational and technical cooperation activities more closely with research to the benefit (hopefully) of each. The 1974-75 programme and budget also saw a broad shift towards the rural sector. Six of the seven major research themes dealt with rural employment or rural development. The issue of urban unemployment (and, therefore, the urban informal sector) was viewed as, in essence, a reflection of stresses and imbalances between the rural and the "modern" or formal urban sectors. So research on urban unemployment was a secondary priority, not the dominant concern of top management.
Over the course of the 1970s, the phrase "the urban informal sector" gradually replaced "urban unemployment". Most of the work consisted of city studies, with an emphasis on investigation and original supplementary data collection, and on policy level advice. Relatively little emphasis went into direct remedial programmes and traditional technical assistance projects. This approach made sense since the concept was new and neither understood nor as yet widely accepted. It needed to be demonstrated, first, that the issues encapsulated by the phrase were important ones and that this new phrase contributed in a useful way to the development dialogue. The first phase of research carried out studies on Calcutta, Abidjan, Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Lagos and Bogota. The second phase focussed on the informal sector as such across a wider size range of Third World cities.
"Perhaps the major contribution of (these studies) was to demonstrate the importance of the urban informal sector in employment and income generation ... Tentative estimates of the size of the sector in terms of its share of the urban labour force range from 40 to 60 per cent." (7)
The documentary output during this decade was impressive. By the early part of the 1980s, this urban unemployment rubric of the WEP had produced thirteen books published by the ILO plus another 7 by outside publishers, nine articles for the International Labour Review, 45 WEP Studies, eight technical reports to individual countries, and roughly 25 miscellaneous documents. (8)
However, two major events took place during the 1970s which significantly affected the whole ILO, including the urban informal sector programme. First was the Tripartite World Conference on Employment, Income Distribution and Social Progress and the International Division of Labour (commonly called the World Employment Conference). This special conference took place in June 1976, in tandem with the regular World Labour Conference. It was probably the high water mark of the WEP, bringing ministries of planning and finance along with ministries of labour into the heart of the employment issue, and giving them a taste of tripartism at the international level. It was also quite an organisational feat, hosting two separate major international conferences at the same time and place.
The World Employment Conference endorsed a "basic needs approach" for development strategies, which continued the focus on the rural sector. While this was appropriate, since the incidence of poverty was clearly both numerically greater and more acute in rural areas, this meant that the urban informal sector continued to be somewhat out of the limelight of institutional priorities. In the 1978-79 programme and budget, drawn up in late 1976 and 1977 immediately following the World Employment Conference, the informal sector was rolled into the sub-programme Employment and Basic Needs in the Rural and Informal Sectors, one of the six sub-programmes which made up Major Programme 60 - Employment and Development.
The second event was equally as dramatic but much more negative, - the withdrawal of the United States from membership in the ILO -- taking with it a full quarter of the ILO budget. Suddenly, instead of being able to develop a programme and budget for the next biennium building upon the momentum from the World Employment Conference and a decade of spade work to get employment into the center of development strategies and debate, the ILO was faced with an identity crisis as traumatic as its removal to Montreal in 1940 at the outbreak of the Second World War. While this crisis did not really relate to the work of the WEP, the Employment Department had to take its knocks along with the rest of the house. The crisis hit the 1978-79 programme hardest, since it had been finalised and approved in June 1977 but came into operation six weeks following the US withdrawal. It had to be cut back by 25 per cent. The 1980-81 programme and budget, which was put together while the crisis was at its height in 1978 and 1979, was also seriously affected. It had to be constructed with 303 fewer "budgetary positions". So, instead of an institution moving forward on issues and concepts such as the informal sector, the Office ended the decade in a defensive, retreating mode.
Despite this inauspicious start, the decade of the 1980s saw the concept of the urban informal sector spread rapidly. It became one of the five "global themes" of the Medium Term Plan for 1982 to 1987 (approved by the Governing Body in 1980). For the first time, informal sector activities began to appear in other major programmes besides the Employment Department. The new PIACT (International Programme for the Improvement of Working Conditions and Environment, know by its French acronym) included informal sector work items. The next biennium (1984-85) included nine distinct informal sector work items, including activities in the Training Department and the Sectoral Activities Department. By 1986-87, there were 17 work items; and by the 1988-89 biennium every major technical programme had at least one work item dealing with the informal sector. Although the 1988-89 biennium fell between the two Medium Term Plans of 1982-87 and 1990-95, the informal sector was one of its priority "interdepartmental themes". This is also the first biennium in which a major programme in the relations sector (9), the Workers' Activities Bureau, included an informal sector work item.
A perusal of the official programmes and budgets over the three decades (10) also reveals how attention gradually shifted from analysis and documentation towards remedial actions. Efforts in the 1970s had centred around exploring and analysing the informal sector. As the pace of activities began to pick up again throughout the Office after the financial crisis of the US withdrawal, the 1980s saw other departments include the informal sector in their activities. And the focus changed as well. Technical units concerned with training, labour administration, working conditions, co-operatives, workers' organisations, etc. proposed work items with an explicitly remedial focus on the informal sector. This was hardly inappropriate, since a substantial amount of knowledge about the informal sector was now available. It was time to move from identification and exploration and diagnosis to action. However, this also meant that those designing and implementing these remedial actions did not always have a sound grip on the concept. A tendency developed to paste onto existing programmes and approaches (which necessarily had been conceived for a formal sector context) an "informal sector" component. As soon as these new programmes became operational, the mercurial nature of the informal sector became evident. Many of the informal sector units for which the programmes were planned, often most of them, turned out to be either inaccessible or unresponsive to this "help". Meanwhile, the informal sector itself continued to grow.
To understand this increasing focus on remedial actions despite the often meagre and disappointing impact, it is helpful to examine a bit more closely the Office's programming and budgeting process. It looks on the surface quite technical and demand driven. In theory, every two years the Office look afresh at what our constituents need and want and how the ILO can help them. This biannual "rethink" starts with a "programme guidance letter" from the Director General to the rest of the Office, which sets out a few broad themes or leitmotifs for the up-coming two years under consideration. Then, using "zero base budgeting" (decoded, this means: "Just because we have been doing this activity in the past does not mean that our constituents still need it and is therefore not a justification for continuing to do it in the future."), each organisational unit, followed by each branch and then each department, puts forward its proposed "programme" of work items, or "shopping list", for the next biennium. Each work item is costed (mainly for the staff work-months expected to be required). Normally, three such "shopping lists" are invited from each department, one at the same level of current resources, one for a somewhat higher and one for a somewhat lower level.
So, in fact, the technical content of each biennium's programme is put forward by and through the existing staff and the existing organisational structure, and on the basis of existing resource distributions. Also, the whole process starts in the first quarter of the preceding biennium; for example, the work planned to the end of 1983 was first proposed by the respective technical units in early 1980, nearly four years earlier. When the member States come to vote formally on the as yet still only proposed biennial programme six months before the current programme and budget expires, there is little room for change. Any additional work on, say, the informal sector has to bump some other work item out of the package. Thus, despite the appearances of carefully anchoring the programme and budget on an objective technical analysis of constituent needs, there is plenty of scope for political influence, development fashions, bureaucratic power struggles, protecting existing compromises and balances, personal career interests, etc. etc. etc.
These human realities of the ILO programming and budgeting process affected the informal sector both as a concept, as a programme, and mainly negatively. Because it did not find a natural champion in either the worker or employer or government group of ILO constituents, the concept never grew to become a programme in its own right. There have been over the years a number of sub-programme units with "informal sector" as part of their title; but there has never been a box in the ILO organisation chart with the specific mandate "the informal sector". When the informal sector became one of the "global themes" for the Medium Term Plans of the 1980's and early 1990s, this put it on the pedestal as one of the programming leitmotifs within the triggering programme guidance letters. Programme managers were (and still are) sensitive to changing fashions, and quickly picked up on this new fashionable topic. They had little problem adding "informal sector components" onto existing programmes no matter how curious the fit.
With no specific organisational unit responsible for the informal sector as such, everybody got into the game; but no one took overall responsibility. Also, most informal sector work items focussed on the visible consequences of working in the informal sector, rather than its much less visible causes. It was much safer to "help" those suffering from informality than to confront those benefiting from it. The overall portfolio drifted gradually away from measuring and analysing the informal sector and its causes over towards taking actions to "help" those caught in it. While these remedial efforts were certainly worthwhile, they drew attention away from WHY the informal sector existed. So it continued to grow! And the ILO continued to put forward every two years rather disjointed portfolios of remedial "action". We, in effect, treated the patients suffering from this growing social disease but never attacked systematically its source(s).
The avoidance of looking into the causes of the informal sector had a political payoff for various interest groups within the ILO community. In the short run at least, it gave the appearance of "doing something" about this social problem while not requiring either the ILO or its constituents to face up to the fact that the informal sector has always been largely unrepresented in the traditional ILO tripartism. The institution could also avoid risking the conclusion that some traditional ILO programmes and procedures were either irrelevant to the informal sector, or possibly even exacerbating it. By concentrating attention on "helping" those suffering from informality (that is, by concentrating on remedying the symptoms rather than correcting the causes of the informal sector), we have been able for three decades to claim that we were responding to an increasingly virulent social disease without having to change our own modus operandi nor risk making any of the technical capacities the Office has built up over the years obsolete. (11)
A corollary tendency also developed along with this focus on symptom instead of cause,
what for the lack of a better term may be called the "miserabilist" vision of the informal sector. A striking feature of the original concept in the Kenya report is the positive attitude towards the informal sector. It is clear that the authors of this report did NOT consider the informal sector as a dead-end "sump" into which fall those who miss out getting swept up into the formal (or, as they called it then, the "modern") sector. On the contrary, they evidently admired the resilience and creativity of informal sector units, usually in the face of tremendous economic and social and political obstacles. In its original conception, the informal sector was an attractive alternative development strategy, a way to escape the modern versus traditional labour market dilemma.
Over the years, however, this positive vision of the informal sector atrophied. The phrase "informal sector" became a synonym for the poorest of the poor, the bottom of the heap, those "missed" by the march of progress, etc. It became axiomatic that any one in the informal sector was there as a last resort. This "miserabilist" vision fitted well with an orientation on "helping the victims" rather than analysing the causes. As long as we viewed the informal sector as a miserable place which anyone would be overjoyed to get helped out of, we could also assume that "helping" those in it to get out, that is to get into the formal sector, was an appropriate long-term strategy. But this "miserabilist" view drew us away from seeing the strengths of the informal sector. And it made it impossible to see the informal sector as what it had originally been presented, a viable alternative approach to the organisation of economic activities. In effect, we were still locked into the modern-tradition and urban-rural modes of dualistic thinking, we had just changed the terminology slightly to include formal-informal.
Outside the ILO also, the concept of the informal sector was gradually catching on. The accompanying chart (Figure 2) shows the number of documents on the informal sector registered each year in the ILO LABORDOC collection. The ILO's own contribution to this growing corpus of informal sector literature ranged between a third and a half of the total. The remainder came mainly from academic institutions and other development organisations. Throughout these decades, there was extensive collaboration and exchange of information and views throughout the development community on the informal sector. While the ILO on its own accounted for less than half of this exchange, it has been the largest single contributor, both year by year and also commutatively.
The building momentum of attention to the informal sector crescendoed in the early 1990s. Three major informal sector "events" marked the first half of the decade; 1) the international tripartite debate on the informal sector at the 1991 International Labour Conference, 2) the 15th International Conference of Labour Statisticians' (January, 1993) adoption of a recommendation on statistics of employment in the informal sector, and 3) the Office-wide inter-departmental project on the informal sector in the 1994-95 biennium.
The 1991 International Labour Conference was the high water mark of international debate and discussion on the informal sector. This was the first time it was a principle and explicit agenda item for a major international conference. This was also the first time it was discussed on a universal and tripartite basis by persons NOT directly involved with dealing with the informal sector. Up to that time, the subject had been largely the domain of "specialists" and "technicians". The 1991 conference provided an occasion for employers' and workers' representatives and government officials, whose professional perspectives normally cover the whole economy, to express themselves on the subject. That was a "first".
The Director General's Report, (12) The dilemma of the informal sector, which introduced the subject and served as the conference discussion document, is still one of the best general treatments on the topic. It focusses, correctly, on the concept without getting too caught up in definitions or statistical demarcations. It also discusses how the informal sector represents a particular mix of challenges to conventional notions of economic governance. Hence its title: "The dilemma of the informal sector". The report outlines the implications of the dilemma in a number of specific policy areas
The report also makes two other points worth mentioning here. First, in its conclusion, the report states clearly: "Contrary to earlier beliefs, the informal sector is not going to disappear spontaneously with economic growth. It is, on the contrary, likely to grow in the years to come, and with it the problems of urban poverty and congestion will also grow." (13) A growing urbanisation is consistent with the developmental expectations of the 1950s and 1960s. However, that this trend towards urbanisation would represent a nexus of seemingly unsolvable problems of grinding urban poverty is quite different from that earlier thinking. The upward spiralling dynamics of "modernisation" which were supposed to accompany urbanisation, and lead to economic "takeoff", didn't kick in; there wasn't any trickle-down of any significance, nor should any be expected, at least not within any reasonable time frame. This is an important conclusion, with fundament implications for the conventional development paradigm. (14)
A second point to note from the Director General's report is its focus on the urban informal sector. Whether the concept of the informal sector applies to rural environments as well as urban has been an issue since the phrase was first coined. In the Kenya report, the context was clearly and explicitly urban. This was also the case for the WEP research work during the 1970s. But outside the ILO, and also as the concept spread to other technical departments within the Office, a tendency developed to apply the phrase somewhat loosely to most any sort of poverty or social exclusion, whether in urban or rural contexts. This has not been a helpful development. Such loose and often casual use of the term has led to confusion and disappointment. As the report explains, while many symptoms of the urban informal sector are also to be found in rural areas, the causes and the context are different, and their accessibility to various kinds of remedies is also quite different. So, for both analytic and remedial reasons, it is better to treat issues of rural poverty and exclusion as separate from the urban informal sector.
If the DG's report on the informal sector was excellent, the debate on it by the tripartite delegations was outstanding. Unfortunately, that debate is much less easily accessible, since it is only available in the Record of Proceedings (15) for the conference, which also includes all the other issues which the conference took up. Also, in addition to a certain stylized manner of expression particular to an international conference, some speakers use their opportunity for intervention to make observations on other issues as well. All this must be "filtered out" to get to the points on the informal sector which the various speakers wished to make.
For the diligent and the patient, however, the rewards are worth the effort. During the three weeks of the Conference, 220 speakers rose to give their views on the report "The dilemma of the informal sector" and the issues it described. Out of these, about half came from the Government group, of whom 77 were ministers or equivalent. 43 delegates from the Employers Group and 49 from the Workers Groups spoke, and 16 observers, mostly from international trade secretariats. Despite the fact that the report emphasised the prominent role of women in the informal sector, of the 220 speakers only 9 were females: six ministers and one employer and two worker delegates. Virtually every region and every political system and every level of economic development was represented. Even a casual perusal of the speeches shows that this tripartite and universal gathering of delegates both understood the issue(s) and spoke their minds. It is this unique combination of diversity plus informed candour which makes that international debate on the informal sector so interesting.
What did they say? It is both presumptuous and superficial to condense into a few lines over two hundred speeches. Many speakers, especially from the Government Group, took pains to describe efforts in their country to deal with the informal sector. Virtually all supported the importance of the concept and the need for it to continue as an important issue for attention from the ILO. A range of views is evident regarding the urban-vs-rural issue, and especially about the extent to which international labour standards and other forms of regulation could or even should apply also to the informal sector. Nearly every speaker, however, concluded that the informal sector could not simply be ignored either by public authorities or in the tripartite social dialogue. It had to be brought into the economic and social mainstream, ... somehow.
The Director-General's reply to the debate gives a good synthesis of the main points. It also highlights where there is an international consensus, and on what topics such a consensus has not yet evolved. For ease of reference, this reply is attached as ANNEX 2.
A curious epilogue of this 1991 Conference debate on the informal sector took place at the Governing Body the following November (251st Session). The Office submitted a paper (16) to the GB's Committee on Employment for follow-up on the Conference debate, proposing five lines of action: (a) data collection and policy research, (b) organisation of informal sector producers and workers, (c) improvement of the productive potential of the informal sector, (d) establishment of an appropriate regulatory framework, and (e) improved social protection. Following a somewhat unusual procedure in the committee, (17) the GB's Committee on Employment eventually included with its report a text representing "the personal views of the Chairman", which among other things called upon the ILO to "give priority to assisting the governments and employers' and workers' organisations of member States in the following areas": (a) improving the productivity of informal sector activities, (b) providing basic social protection to informal sector producers and workers, and (c) promoting and strengthening the organisation and collective action of informal sector producers and workers. (18) The full GB, then formally "requested the Director-General to take account of the Committee's discussion in preparing the document for preliminary consultation on the Programme and Budget proposals for 1994-95 and in carrying out current activities pertaining to the informal sector." (19)
Notice the differences between what the Office proposed and what the Committee on Employment recommended under the guise of "the personal views of the Chair". This little arm wrestling between the Office and the Governing Body over the priorities for ILO work on the informal sector has been an under-current issue since the informal sector first appeared in 1972. Two issues kept coming up repeatedly. First, the Office has always included informal sector measurement and analysis and policy research as a prominent (often central) element in its informal sector work-plans; while the GB has shown a recurring preference for remedial actions. Second, when it comes to remedial actions, to what extent should ILO activities be carried out predominantly, even exclusively, through recognised tripartite constituents, especially through and with trade unions and, to a lessor extend, employers' organisations or through other groups such as NGOs? These issues are still with us.
The second major event of the 1990s for the informal sector was its inclusion on the agenda of the 15th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS), in January 1993.
To be sure, the agenda item on the informal sector did not come out of the blue. In 1982, at the 13th ICLS, the issue of the informal sector was discussed briefly and a resolution was adopted stating that "it is desirable that countries develop appropriate methodologies and data collection programmes on the urban informal sector and the rural non-agricultural activities." (20) That resolution was then followed in 1987, at the 14th ICLS, where the General Report informed, under the rubric "non-standard forms of employment and income", that the Office's Bureau of Statistics planned to "develop a conceptual framework for delineating the various forms of non-standard employment and incomes", including informal sector activities, casual and intermittent employment, out-work, apprenticeship and unpaid family work.
No resolution on the informal sector had been anticipated by the secretariat for the conference. During the discussion of the General Report, however, the delegates demonstrated a keen interest in the issue of the informal sector. The delegate from Mexico moved orally a resolution on the need for more careful and in-depth treatment. After some discussion, a short formal Resolution VIII - Resolution Concerning the Informal Sector, was adopted which called for the informal sector to be put on the agenda of the next ICLS. (21) That was significant since it meant that the informal sector would be the subject of a separate technical report by the Office and the Conference would deliberate with a view towards a formalised international standard.
The 14th ICLS also concluded that "the 'economic unit' was the most appropriate measurement unit for defining the informal sector." (22) This was, and still is, a tendentious issue in discussions about the informal sector. Should the unit of analysis be the individuals working in these conditions; or should it be the "enterprises" where they work even though these are typically very small, owned by the workers themselves and hard to catch and delineate statistically? This is more than a purely academic question. Which unit of analysis is chosen influences what kinds of remedies are envisaged. If this choice is not "well deliberated" (to use Amartya Sen's phrase) then the hoped-for fruits from these remedies are likely to be pretty ephemeral, as has disappointingly often been the case. Discussing here the implications of this choice of unit of analysis would take us on a long detour from this institutional history. It is appropriate, however, simply to note that in 1987, the ICLS was "virtually unanimous" that the choice should be the "economic unit", not the worker.
In accordance with established practice, the Office prepared in 1992 a report "Statistics on Employment in the Informal Sector", as the basis for discussion on one of the three technical agenda items at the 15th ICLS in January 1993. (23) Also as per established practice, the report included a "draft resolution" for the conference to examine. Both the report and the draft resolution dealt with conceptual and definitional issues as well as methodological questions. As with "The dilemma of the informal sector" report in 1991, it drew together a wealth of background information and, along with the draft resolution, served to focus and to animate the discussion of the ICLS. However, the tripartite and universal debate itself generated a number of interesting and significant insights and perspectives which had not been captured fully in the document prepared by the Office. So anyone who looks back to this report should take care to examine also the final report on the full conference (24), which contains both the report of the committee dealing with the informal sector technical item and also the final formal resolution which the ICLS actually adopted.
The final resolution of the 15th ICLS quickly got a significant boost in international status. Separately but parallel to the ILO's work on statistics on employment in the informal sector, other major international organisations were engaged in a major revision of the 1968 version of the international System of National Accounts (SNA) (25), the conceptual framework for the national financial and economic statistical systems used for such things as calculating national product, international reporting of comparable economic and financial data, etc. It is the core schema upon which these national accounting systems and virtually all international economic and financial comparative data are based.
The 1993 revision of the SNA was the culmination of a decade-long effort, under the general direction of the UN's Statistical Commission, with full technical and financial participation of EUROSTAT, the IMF, the World Band, and OECD, as well as various Specialised Agencies within the UN family. In the introduction, highlighting the significant changes of the new schema over the 1968 version, "the 1993 SNA notes and makes use of the distinction between the informal and formal sectors." (26) The new SNA also explicitly recognises the lead role played by the ILO with respect to the informal sector, and incorporated as an annex a two-page extract from the recent resolution by the ICLS. Thus, within a few weeks of its adoption, the ICLS resolution of statistics on employment in the informal sector was formally included into this SNA 1993 and then formally adopted and recommended to the international community by the United Nations Economic and Social Council. It is hard to imagine a more authoritative or universal endorsement!
Considering the importance of the 15th ICLS Resolution II, the "universal and tripartite" way in which it was developed, and its unique high-level endorsement, it seems appropriate to include the full text as ANNEX 3.
One final remark before moving on from the 15th ICLS. The conference also took up as a separate technical item the revision of the international classification of status in employment, and adopted the new ICSE-93. Much of the content of that item's technical report and its subsequent discussion touched on issues either closely or directly related to issues linked with the informal sector. The interested reader is therefore urged to look into the section of the 15th ICLS on status in employment as well. As with the debates on the informal sector, it is also useful to read the record of discussions as well as the final resolution.
The third major informal sector "event" of the 1990s was the interdepartmental project on the informal sector in the 1994-95 Programme and Budget. Interdepartmental projects were an innovation into the ILO programming and budgeting process with the 1992-93 Programme and Budget. This, however, was the first full programming and budgeting cycle under the directorship of Mr. Hansenne. As stated in its introduction: "In recent years, the need has become apparent for more concerted action by the Office in certain fields crossing departmental boundaries." (27) A new "department" for these cross-cutting projects was inserted into the P & B (Major Programme 140), with several issues singled out for special intensive interdepartmental attention during each biennium. That innovation lasted only through two biennia. In 1996-97, the "interdepartmental project" approach mutated into a series of smaller but more numerous "action programmes" each of which was attached into the traditional departmental structure.
While they lasted, there were six interdepartmental projects, of which one in the 1994-95 Programme and Budget, was on the informal sector. (28) The project's objectives were: (a) to improve the productivity of informal sector activities, (b) to extend to informal sector producers and workers basic social protections incorporated into certain fundamental international labour standards, and (c) to promote and strengthen informal sector organisations and institutions for collective action. Its allocation included funds for 10 professional work-years plus nearly $1 million for non-staff costs, plus an additional $309,000 of additional funds for training courses and seminars and meetings in three selected cities: Bogota (Colombia), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Manila (Philippines). There were also significant contributions and extensive collaboration with local authorities at both the municipal and national levels, and also with other donor agencies. Over thirty officials from 16 different technical units and field offices participated in varying ways in the project. There were also three full-time local project coordinators (one in each city) plus a whole host of local and national government officials, representatives from employers' and workers' organisations, and NGOs who participated both in the planning and programming of project activities in each city, and then in the implementation of these activities. Also, and to the extent possible in each city, representatives from the informal sector itself were involved. In short, the project constituted a significant concerted effort involving a number of people from a range of technical and cultural perspectives.
The main thematic areas around which the project orchestrated its efforts were as follows:
Two leitmotifs running throughout the project were "participation" and "demand driven". This meant in practice that many people were involved and therefore much time spent on deciding what to do and how to do it. This in turn affected the timing of preliminary project activities, which in turn delayed other subsequent activities. For example, the statistics on the informal sector were not available until much later than expected, which meant that other activities were either delayed in turn or went ahead without the factual analysis that would have been desirable if a longer overall time frame had been possible. Notwithstanding these delays, however, virtually all directly involved in the project agreed that the leitmotifs were in the final analysis the wiser course to have followed.
One of the project's principal, if intangible, outputs was to stimulate attention and interest on, and practical innovations towards, the informal sectors in these three cities, especially in circles which usually did not consider issues of the informal sector to be particularly relevant to them. In that respect, the project was highly successful. It also achieved a rare degree of coordination and cross-fertilisation between different intellectual disciplines and different governmental authorities and different informal sector actors.
The project also generated a substantial amount of documentary output. Its bibliography included 27 publications or internal documents for Manila and Dar es Salaam each plus 17 on Bogota plus a number of documents of a general or conceptual nature. (29)
The interdepartmental project, however, suffered from a design flaw similar to the comprehensive employment missions of the early 1970s - follow-up. While the project was in full swing, and using its own resources to fund specific activities, things went well and target group interest was maintained. When the project ended, however, or when some specific activity was not funded directly by the project but left to counterpart contribution or to funding by some other donor, then the music changed. As a consequence, expectations were raised during the course of the project which were then unfulfilled when funds ran out and a new programme and budget cycle came into effect.
The closing two biennia of the decade have had their attention on other things besides the informal sector. The practice of budgeting three to four major interdepartmental projects was overtaken with smaller scale, but more numerous, 'action programmes', "... special project(s) concerning a highly topical problem regarded as a priority by constituents in member States. Each action programme is intended to attain a specific aim and to result in one or more products which may be made available to constituents ..." (30)
The 1996-97 Programme & Budget contained thirteen action plans spread out among the various technical departments. Many of these action programmes dealt with topics linked to the informal sector, but none was specifically on the informal sector itself . A budget line entitled "informal sector" appeared in the Entrepreneurship and Management Development programme, which had been the bureaucratic "home" for the informal sector interdepartmental project during its operation, to bring to term the remaining threads from the project in the three cities, but only a small allocation for operational activities. There was also a sub-program on "urban poverty and the informal sector" within the (then) Development and Technical Cooperation programme. This subprogram, however, focussed mainly on urban infrastructure development and on informal settlements. Also, under the "workers participation in development" subprogram of the Workers Activities programme, plans were included for an international symposium in Geneva "to examine trade union action to further the interests of informal sector workers." (31)
The 1998-99 Programme & Budget contained sixteen action programmes; and, again, several dealt with informal sector issues but none was focussed specifically on it. There were also informal sector "work items" in several technical departments. The Statistics Bureau budget included several activities related to informal sector measurement and statistics which focussed on implementing the mandate given the ILO in the Revised System of National Accounts (SNA 1993). The Development Policies department (formerly Development and Technical Cooperation, but still with the same acronym POLDEV) had changed its informal sector rubric to "The future of employment in the urban and informal sectors" and proposed to undertake technical assistance under the somewhat grand title "The Urban Employment Programme", but to be financed principally from extra-budgetary sources. The Workers' Activities programme, in addition to its international symposium rescheduled from the previous biennium, programmed various activities to assist trade unions "to help informal sector workers to establish their own organisations and develop existing ones".
Our historical survey ends now. But what of the future? Some insight on the thinking which will dominate ILO activities on the informal sector in the coming millennium can be gleaned from the 1999 Conference, specifically from two key documents and two important speeches. The two documents are the new style Programme and Budget 2000-01 and the Report of the Director General "Decent Work". Each of these documents presents itself, legitimately, as a cornerstone for the emerging "renewed and rejuvenated ILO" of the next millennium. The two speeches are the special address to the conference by Professor Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel laureate in economics, and the official "Reply by the Director General" to the discussion of his report "Decent Work".
These two documents and two speeches are interesting for several reasons. First, each is deliberately wide and encompassing in scope, and NOT focussed specifically on the informal sector. Thus, we are able to see where this issue fits into the overall constellation of competing and complementing ideas. Second, with the exception of Prof. Sen's speech (for which he certainly did not need, and probably did not receive, any assistance), each is a collective product, the fruit of the ILO's own "brightest and best". Each is also, in Professor Sen's phrase, "well deliberated", meaning that the contents have been carefully reviewed and examined by a number senior officials. Thus, taken together, they constitute a fair sounding of current top-level thinking within the ILO about the informal sector. Third, they are contemporaneous with each other and also aimed at the same audience, the international labour conference. So they are comparable in terms of scope and basic content, they are co-incident in terms of time, and they are all intended for the same audience, the international labour conference, which is the most authoritative organ of the ILO.
What comes across from these four sources is that, in today's ILO, the urban informal sector is both not at the "centre of the stage" but still never far from the institution's concerns. Each, whether speech or report, seems to shy away from the "urban informal sector" as the expression of choice. Other synonyms or close substitutes keep coming up ( "informal activities", "informal labour", "the unorganised sector", "unregulated work", etc); but the full traditional phrase "the urban informal sector" seems almost to be avoided. (32) Some of this may be explained as style, some also possibly as wanting to avoid the connotation of separateness associated with the word "sector". Yet there is a clear intention in each to catch that large and growing portion of the economically active who do not fall within the "organised" or "formal" category. Each also shows clearly a genuine concern about this shadowy zone and about the consequences for those who get caught there. And each makes this issue of "those in the shadows" a central concern for the "renewed and renovated" ILO of the next millennium. So, in a sense, while the phrase continues to fall short of universal acceptance, the concept behind the phrase has in fact been incorporated into the schema of where and on what we need to focus in the future. Isn't this want the authors of the original Kenya report really wanted? But, the concept remains as elusive and mercurial and ephemeral and mysterious as it was in 1972 ... only bigger.
The preceding paragraphs have focussed on what happened over the past three decades within the ILO regarding the informal sector. As a final note, it seems worth taking at least a glance also at what did NOT happen. As Shirlock Holmes demonstrated, sometimes the significance lies in the fact that the dog did NOT bark.
One striking "non-event" concerning the ILO and the informal sector is the establishing of an organic unit to look after it. This is a normal bureaucratic response to an issue considered of more than passing important - set up a unit for the issue. Yet over the three decades no branch or "programme" in the bureaucratic structure was ever established specifically and explicitly and more or less exclusively for the informal sector. There have been plenty of work items woven into the programmes of existing units, but never its own "stand alone flag" on the organisation chart. Other special concerns such as vocational rehabilitation of handicapped persons have become "established", as so also have particular techniques such as micro-finance, as so also have other "cross-cutting issues" such as gender, ... but not the informal sector. Curious?
Another noticeable "non-event" has been the absence of informal sector posts in the field structure. In the 17 multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) in the field, out of the 140-odd total posts, not a single one is dedicated specifically to the informal sector as such, although two posts (both within the Americas Region) include informal sector workers in their mandate under the residual heading "vulnerable workers". But this is not quite the same as a "dedicated" informal sector post. This was also the case with the various regional technical teams which pre-dated the multi-disciplinary teams. In those days, the informal sector was "covered" by the respective regional employment team. All the employment teams did work on the informal sector, but only PREALC (covering Latin America and the Caribbean) had a "dedicated" informal sector post.
The most striking non-event concerning the ILO and the informal sector, in my eyes at least, has been its determined intellectual separation from international labour standards. A priori, these two topics both lie at the heart of the institution's mandate. International labour standards are our oldest and most esteemed and most general "product". Workers in the informal sector are in often desperate need of the social protection which standards are designed to offer. So the match would seem obvious. Here is an evident need and here is a package solution readily at hand.
As early as 1984, with the revision of the employment policy standards, there was an unambiguous recognition of the need to bring the framework of legal protections embodied in international labour standards into the working realities of informal sector workers. But there seems to be hardly any effort to follow up on this. For instance, in 1991, the same conference which discussed the Dilemma of the Informal Sector incorporated an exclusion in its Convention 172 (Working Conditions in Hotels Restaurants and Similar Establishments), an industry with a large informal sector, for "certain types of establishments which fall within the definition mentioned above but where nevertheless special problems of a substantial nature arise." (e.g., "informality"?). Even standards on such evidently informal sector issues as homework or contract labour make only obscure and indirect references if any to the informal sector and generally skirt around the whole issue. The Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and the recent standards on the worst forms of child labour both avoid the concept altogether.
Why this divorce between standards and the informal sector, when there seems so much potential for synergy? This is an important but difficult question to answer, which would take us well beyond the scope of the present exercise. Still, two possible if only partial explanations seem worth a cursory glance. First, there is a logical argument. Once a specific topic, say home-work, becomes the subject of an international labour standard, there is no longer a "gap" in the required international legal "framework". Once the lacuna is filled, the topic is by definition no longer "informal", at least as concerns international labour "law" and that specific aspect of the informal sector. Issues which can be the subject of an international standard are not by their nature specific to the informal sector but are general to economic life. So the notion of international labour standards for the informal sector is an oxymoron. The relevant issue is not the standards themselves but rather their application to the informal as well as the formal sectors.
This logic may have some appeal, and even some merit; but it is wrong, ... and dangerously attractive. True; economic activity in the informal sector does take place in a legal "twilight zone". However, it does not follow that this legal shadow results only from "omissions" in the prevailing legal system. Nor does it follow that this legal system is "neutral" toward the informal sector. Indeed, one of the causes of the informal sector is the schema of national economic governance, including both laws and macro-economic policies and both their administrations, which is applied to the formal sector. The very existence of the informal sector is evidence that this schema is inappropriate and/or inadequate. Thus, the legal schema is itself, a priori, a most attractive window to address the underlying dynamics which cause the growth of the informal sector. To the extend that international labour standards are there to guide member States to construct "good" schemas of economic governance, should we in the ILO not try to make these standards informal sector "friendly", perhaps even pro-active?
But it is just such an approach which has been ferociously resisted, usually under the cover of not "watering down" existing standards. Why? We have seen in recent years the complete reversal of international standards protecting female workers, and usually with the full support of the women workers themselves. Nobody calls the up-dating of these gender conventions "watering down". Perhaps it is time to review international labour conventions and recommendations as possible causes of the growing informalisation of economic activity? My hunch is that the informal sector workers themselves would welcome the attention.
It seems appropriate to conclude this historical review with a few general observations. First, the concept of the informal sector seems still to this day to sit uncomfortably within a tripartite culture. Each of the ILO tripartite constituencies has natural and genuine inclinations to help those in the informal sector. But each also has fundamental problems how to go about this, and is to a certain extent threatened by its very existence. So, not surprisingly, each of the three Groups has had rather mixed feelings about the Office's work on the informal sector and, very important, also mixed feelings about applying resources to informal sector work when this is at the expense of other work closer to that Group's primary concerns. Fortunately for the informal sector, these mixed feelings differed with each group, and have also shifted over time as the concept became more clear and as its size and importance became more evident.
Second, the history of ILO work on the informal sector sheds some interesting light on the relationship between the Office and its supervisory organs, the Governing Body and the International Labour Conference. The officially hierarchical relationship may not be quite as hierarchical as it appears. For at least a decade, the Office continued work on the informal sector and the development of the concept despite at best indifference and sometimes open opposition from within the Governing Body. The Workers Group through the 1970s and early 1980s consistently opposed work on the informal sector. A sea change within the Workers' Group came in 1984 when the ICFTU at its own conference passed the first resolution calling for trade unions to take a more active role towards the informal sector. The employers, while now also endorsing a positive approach to the informal sector, continue to this day to express concern about "unfair competition". Fortunately, the Office continued for nearly two decades to work on the informal sector if not in open defiance certainly in open non-compliance with these Groups preferences. And the way things developed has demonstrated, I think, that this was the correct approach.
Third, it is not quite accurate to say the Office continued working on the informal sector. It would be more correct to say that certain officials did. At the management level, the ILO as an institution never really "put its shoulder" to the informal sector theme as has, for example, the new management to gender. I have already mentioned how the informal sector never got its "own" rubric in the official programme and budget. The fact that there is an informal sector theme today is the result of the professional perspicacity and tenacity of a few officials below the senior management or directorate level. I have already mentions Misters Lubell and Sethuraman, neither of whom was on the Kenya comprehensive employment mission but who picked up this concept as the core for their urban unemployment research activities, at the behest of Louis Emerij. Victor Tokman championed the usefulness of the concept through the late 1980s, when the World Employment Programme as a whole was under critical re-examination and both departmental and senior management were inclined to "close out" work on the informal sector as a somewhat dated concept without much glamour left in it. George Niham also deserves credit for pioneering the concept on the francophone side, notably in Africa, often against stiff linguistic and cultural resistance as an "anglo-saxon transplant". The vacuum caused by his untimely death was well filled by Carlos Maldonado. These professionals persevered with the informal sector as a conceptual tool even when it was not the evident "fast track" for personal advancement. They have demonstrated that individuals can and do make a difference.
As a final observation, it is fair to say that the concept of "an informal sector" has now entered the development paradigm. There is still plenty of divergence about how to define it, and even more about how to deal with it. But no one doubts that the informal sector exists, that it is large, most agree that it is growing, and that it will be around for a good while yet. This is no small achievement! In the terminology of cultural change, we have achieved an "un-freezing" of the old paradigm, which is a precondition for genuine progress. This kind of paradigm shift is what the ILO is really all about. It now remains to build upon this achievement and incorporate the informal sector into the evolving new paradigm of the "renewed and rejuvenated ILO" of the coming millennium.
Hopefully, this brief review of the institutional history of the ILO and the informal sector will help in the task. As the historian Barbara Tuchmann has said, the only light we have to illuminate the future is the lantern on the stern.
The following list contains the work items on the informal sector in the ILO's official Programme and Budget as approved by the International Labour Conference over the past three decades. These "official" work items are the ones which have made it successfully through a long negotiating process every two years which starts with what individual officials suggest that the ILO should do and, after being hammered into a coherent "programme" by the Office's own programming procedures and then being cleared through the Governing Body, eventually ends with what the member States formally agree as to how their financial contributions to the organisation should be spent.
This list is not an exhaustive nor definitive itemisation of work done by the ILO on the informal sector. Some of these items never actually end up being carried out, for all sorts of reasons. Other work not set out in the official "regular budget" programme either comes up unexpectedly or is carried out "off the radar screen" through externally funded technical cooperation projects or through the individual initiative of a concerned official. This list does, however, reflect the overall vision and approach to the informal sector within the ILO. It also gives a bird's eye view of how the concept of the informal sector has evolved in the official thinking and resource allocation process of the institution.
| Prog No. | Description of work item (with para. number) |
| 1969 (last one-year programme and budget of ILO) World Employment Programme (WEP) is launched, and includes research programme on urban unemployment | |
|
1970 - 71 (first two-year programme and budget) | |
| 7 | Human Resources department |
| 7.4 | Manpower Planning and Organisation branch |
| para 285 " ... and to examine in depth certain aspects of the problem of rural-urban migration ..." (including reissue of a 1960 study, "Why Labour Leaves the Land") | |
|
1972 - 73 | |
|
70 |
Employment Planning and Promotion department |
| Urban unemployment research programme | |
| para. 340 "... (a) a broad study ... to analyse the problems of urban unemployment from a multi-disciplinary point of view ..., (b) a two-part study ... to examine employment expansion possibilities within those modern and traditional activities which comprise the "services sector", and (c) (an analysis of ) urban employment problems arising from the migration into towns of a largely unskilled rural population ... (and ) economic activities among persons living in marginal urban areas." | |
|
1974 - 75 | |
|
70 |
Employment Planning and Promotion department |
| Urban unemployment research programme - continued | |
| para. 547 "... the (research programme) will consist of (i)additional case studies along the lines of those carried out in Calcutta in 1972 and Abidjan in 1973, and (ii) the preparation of a general report which would be a revision of an earlier monograph on urban unemployment in the light of the case studies." | |
|
1976 - 77 | |
|
60 |
Employment and Development |
| 60.- | Urbanisation and employment sub-programme |
| (Intro. para 50) "... extend the scope ow work on the urban informal sector" (case studies had then
been completed on Calcutta, Dakar, Abidjan, Jakarta, Sao Paulo and Bogota)
(para. 51) "... re-orient current activities ... towards the employment implications of (urban) polution and living conditions." | |
|
1978 - 79 | |
|
60 |
Employment and Development |
| 60.2 | Employment and basic needs in the rural and informal sectors sub-programme |
| 60.20 "... the alleviation of poverty in the rural areas and informal sectors of developing countries | |
| 60.27(c) "... further research and advice on policies for the informal sector ... and (advisory services) | |
|
1980 - 81 | |
|
60 |
Employment and Development |
| 60.2 | National employment and basic needs strategies |
| 60.23 " ... and measures to help the informal sector" | |
| 60.25 " ... a report about the suitablity of unconventional systems for obtaining complementary manpower information in the informal sector." | |
|
1982 - 83 | |
|
60 |
Employment and Development |
| 60.2 | National employment and basic needs strategies sub-programme |
| 60.21 - "development of the urban informal sector" (studies, practical guidelines, technical assistance) "The proposed activities would build upon the experience acquired in previous biennia. Studies would be undertaken to identify viable informal sector activities and their capacity to generate growth. Practical guidelines would be prepared analysing factors contributing to success or failure in the informal sector." | |
| 90 | Working Conditions and Environment (PIACT) |
| 90.22 " ... new emphasis on the informal urban sector (sic)" with tripartite regional seminars in Africa and Latin America | |
| 90.71 " ... study (to) identify the major issues and the magnitude and nature of the problem of poor working conditions and workers' welfare in the informal sector." | |
|
1984 - 85 | |
|
60 |
Employment and Development |
| 60.2 | Labour market problems and policies sub-programme |
| 60.13 Impact of labour market policies on employment and poverty in urban areas | |
| 60.18 Development of efficient low-cost systems of labour market information for rural and informal sectors (national training courses "in at least 10 countries" - practical guidelines for the organisation and operation of key informants approach, sub-regional seminars, etc.) | |
| 60.3 | National & international aspects of employment and development policy sub-programme |
| 60.31 "... studies on the nature and extend of interdependence between the formal and informal sectors and on the links between the informal sector and the provision of basic needs, particularly housing and other urban services." | |
| 70 | Training |
| 70.2 | Management development sub-programme |
| 70.26 "guidelines and training materials in entrepreneurship development for trainers and prospective entrepreneurs would be developed" | |
| 70.29 "(a) a tested methodology for the design and implementation of appraisal techniques for small loans and for management and supervision of small loan portfolios by rural bank managers, and (b) guidelines for the training of loan officers in rural banks ... " | |
| 70.30 " (a) a comprehensive inventory of completed research (on subcontracting), (b) ... an inventory of existing subcontracting practices, and (c) design arrangements for the active promotion and use of subcontracting to develop small enterprises." | |
| 70.33 "'action guidelines' - for training systems for managers of rural development programmes "which can be run remotely, thus reducing the need for costly residential programmes." | |
| 70.4 | Training Policies sub-programme |
| 70.70 a technical paper on "alternative low-cost training inputs to improve skill acquisition in the informal sector", including two pilot projects. | |
| 90 | Working Conditions and Environment |
| 90.3 | Conditions of work and welfare facilities |
| 90.68 following on work in the 1982-83 biennium, "case studies in developing countries to identify what measures can be taken to meet the needs of workers in the area of working conditions, the working environment and welfare facilities, including those of homeworkers, as well as in regard to occupational safety and health services and ergonomic improvements." | |
| 100 | Sectoral Activities |
| 100.3 | Basic industries and transport sub-programme |
| 100.18 A study on "the role of the construction industry in the process of urbanisation and urban rehabilitation in developing countries, ... particularly (focussed) on new approaches to the need for low-cost construction programmes, including self-help schemes." | |
| 100.6 | Cooperatives sub-programme |
| 100.58 "Special attention would be given to the urban informal sector, and the potential for applying a participative approach to the development of projects in this sector." | |
|
1986 - 87 | |
| 60 | Employment and Development |
| 60.2 | Labour markets and employment planning sub-programme |
| 60.13 Case studies on youth unemployment and the functioning of urban labour markets | |
| 60.17 exploratory study on the important role and special problems of women in informal sector activities | |
| 70 | Training |
| 70.3 | Vocational training sub-programme |
| 70.39 implication of new instructional technologies for developing countries | |
| 70.40 Methods of providing vocational skills to individuals with low literacy levels | |
| 70.41 Promotion and coordination of the development of learning materials and aids at regional and country levels | |
| 70.44 "guidelines for the improved delivery of relevant skills ... with special reference to Africa where the urban informal sector has been growing at a rapid rate." | |
| 80 | Industrial Relations and Labour Administration |
| 80.2 | Labour law and labour relations sub-programme |
| 80.23 Continuation of earlier work, national monographs on precarious employment, concentrating on home work | |
| 90 | Working Conditions and Environment |
| 90.3 | Conditions of work and welfare facilities sub-programme |
| 90.55 "develop audio-visual training packages using local examples" to improve working conditions in small and medium-sized enterprises | |
| 90.65 Practical guide on basic welfare facilities in small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries | |
| 90.72 Child labour in the services sector. "... gather detailed micro-level information, identify (worst areas), assess existing policies and programmes, (etc.) ... " | |
| 90.73 "gather, assess and publish information on ... government policies and programmes in respect of work sites, welfare facilities and social services" in the informal sector | |
| 90.74 "temporary or casual work, sub-contracted work, home work and similar types of activities" | |
| 100 | Sectoral Activities |
| 100.3 | Basic industries and transport sub-programme |
| 100.14 Study on the social and labour issues connected with all forms of urban transport in selected African cities | |
| 100.6 | Cooperative sub-programme |
| 100.54 Study on cooperative type services for urban low income groups ... in providing employment opportunities in selected manufacturing and service industries | |
| 120 | Labour Information and Statistics |
| 120.3 | Statistics sub-programme |
| 120.23 "advise five African countries on the development of a core programme of labour statistics, including the collection of data relating to the informal sector." | |
| 55 | Promotion of Equality |
| 55.4 | International migration for employment sub-programme |
| 55.28 Returning migrants in the informal sector | |
| 60 | Employment and Development |
| 60.2 | Labour markets and employment planning sub-programme |
| 60.21 "monograph assessing ongoing programmes and policies in three selected countries with a view to enhancing the capacity of developing countries to design and implement appropriate policies for the informal sector. It is also proposed to undertake a study of the institutions which have been utilised to promote micro-enterprises . Such as grass-root level organisations, government agencies and para-statal organisations." | |
| 70 | Training |
| 70.4 | Training policies sub-programme |
| 70.58 Two in-depth studies ... to determine how the informal sector can be approached, how to assess its needs and how to gain access to it in terms of training interventions." | |
| 70.60 Vocational training for young women in low-income households | |
| 80 | Industrial Relations and Labour Administration |
| 80.2 | Labour law and labour relations sub-programme |
| 80.13 Labour law and labour relations in the informal sector | |
| 90 | Working conditions and environment |
| 90.2 | Occupational safety and health sub-programme |
| 90.19 Draft code of practice on safety and health in construction | |
| 90.24 Study on the provision of occupational health services for small-scale enterprises, agricultural workers and the informal sector | |
| 100 | Sectoral activities |
| 100.3 | Basic industries and transport sub-programme |
| 100.25 Study on the construction of low-cost housing and shelter in developing countries | |
| 100.6 | Cooperatives sub-programme |
| 100.71 Case studies on cooperative type services for urban low-income groups | |
| 120 | Labour information and statistics |
| 120.3 | Statistics sub-programme |
| 120.23 Report on statistics and descriptions of sources and methods for non-standard employment and income | |
| 230 | Workers' activities |
| 230.3 | Workers' education sub-programme |
| 230.22 Manual on special services for urban workers | |
|
1990 - 91 | |
|
60 |
Employment and development |
| Intro. para 43 "a wide-ranging study ... to determine the size of the informal sector and its role in
different countries and regions so as to promote a better understanding of the policies appropriate to
increase employment and incomes.
" ... a review of past and ongoing activities of the ILO and other organisations to improve the design of technical cooperation activities - Guidelines for technical assistance. " ... documentation of experience on the participation of the people concerned in the policy-making process so as to enhance the impact of measures to raise employment and income levels in the informal sector | |
| 70 | Training |
| Intro. para 44 Guidelines on how vocational training institutions can assist and support self-employment in the informal sector. Emphasis on appropriate training methods | |
| 90 | Working Conditions and Environment |
| 90.66 Tripartite meeting of experts to identify ways of effectively protecting home-workers | |
| 90.64 Promotion of practical action by governmental and non-governmental organisations aimed at the abolition of child labour, which is widespread in the informal sector | |
| 120 | Labour Information and Statistics |
| 120.20 work on the measurement of employment in the informal sector
... review of national experience and the main conceptual and methodological issues, in preparation for a meeting of experts in 1992. | |
|
1992 - 93 | |
|
60 |
Employment and Development |
| 60.4 | Employment and incomes in the rural and informal sectors sub-programme |
| 60.52 "Three national studies ... to assess the employment effects of various structural adjustment measures ... (with) special attention on the effect of eliminating parallel markets | |
| 65 | Enterprise and Co-operatives |
| 65.25 Six studies to assess the "nature and importance of regulatory barriers and ... the impact that changes in regulations can have on various categories of micro-enterprises | |
| 70 | Training |
| 70.13 "a study on the conditions under which successful non-formal training schemes can be opened
up to a greater proportion of women."
"a study based on case studies on training that provides employable vocational and business skills." "A set of guidelines to advise training administrators on how to broaden women's access to training." | |
| 70.28 Training for self-employment in the urban informal sector
Study to adapt Skills Development for Self Reliance (SDSR) and Training for Rural Gainful Activities (TRUGA) for the urban informal sector. Handbook on how to design and implement vocational training programmes and projects for the urban informal sector. | |
| 75 | Turin Centre |
| 75.16 Assist the Training department to adapt the TRUGA and SDSR programmes | |
| 250 | field programmes in Africa |
| 250.19 "Drawing on its work on the rural non-farm sector and the urban informal sector, JASPA advisory work ... will ... emphasise the development of small-scale enterprises in the rural sector in general and in the non-farm sector in particular." - six national case studies. | |
| 250.33 " ... (vocational training activities for the urban informal sector) will aim at improving the access of workers in the informal sector to modern training facilities and adapting training programmes to the meeds of the informal sector." | |
| 260 | Field Programme for the Americas |
| 260.20 "... policies oriented studies in 10 countries in order to achieve a better understanding of the relations between the modern and informal sectors ... focus on modern sector demand for informal sector products and on the competitiveness of such products." | |
| 260.26 "... the harmonisation of concepts and methods for data collection, particularly for labour force surveys and studies of the informal sector." | |
| 270 | Field programmes in Asia and the Pacific |
| 270.16 "Studies ... on the growth potential of very small enterprises ... a framework (for) the promotion of small enterprises at the national and local levels ..." | |
|
1994 - 95 | |
|
60 |
Employment and Development |
| 60.4 | Policies and programmes for development sub-programme |
| 60.47 " ... employment and poverty in the urban and informal sectors" | |
| 60.48 " ... practical guidelines ... showing how infrastructure investment can be channelled to alleviate urban poverty and increase productivity and social protection in the informal sector." "Develop and disseminate the components of an effective strategy to alleviate urban poverty through informal sector and infrastructure development." | |
| 60.53 "Women workers in the rural and informal sectors" ... policy guidance, evaluation reports and comparative analyses | |
| 65 | Enterprise and Cooperative Development |
| 65.2 | Entrepreneurship and management development sub-programme |
| 65.17 "The objectives of this sub-programme are to develop entrepreneurship and to up-grade the informal sector." | |
| 65.20 Informal sector development - "When coupled with an appropriate policy environment, these approaches (information, direct support, suitable technology) may help to achieve a gradual integration of the informal sector into the structured economy." | |
| 65.21 "methods will be identified of inducing the private sector to respond to the technological needs of the informal sector" (food processing, building materials, textiles, agricultural tools, and "craftwork") | |
| 65.22 "Practical guidelines ... as a supplement to the services provided in support of small enterprises through ... INSTEAD." | |
| 65.23 "Advisory services will be provided with a view to assisting and promoting the transfer of these services and assistance to local authorities and private and semi-private bodies, including professional organisations. The eventual goal is for the provision of advisory and information services and assistance to be self-supporting." | |
| 75 | Turin Centre |
| 75.15 Employment and training in the informal sector - "meetings and seminars ... with a view to achieving a consensus and obtaining the commitment of governments and the social partners in support of the practical programmes and measures proposed by the (INTERDEP informal sector project - see major programme 140). | |
| 90 | Working Conditions and Environment |
| 90.2 | Occupational Safety and Health sub-programme |
| 90.19 "pilot training workshops will be organised with a view to testing results, training occupational health personnel and promoting workplace participation in practical improvements and first aid." | |
| 90.20 Joint ILO/WHO Committee on Occupational Health "On measures to promote the extension of occupational health services which are suited to the needs of small-scale enterprises, agriculture and the informal sector." | |
| 90.4 | Conditions of Work and Welfare Facilities sub-programme |
| 90.68 Chile labour - support for action by employers' and workers' organisations and community groups. "national seminars and workshops, particularly to encourage action relating to small enterprises and where appropriate the informal sector." | |
| 90.71 Prevention of sexual harassment at work - "collection and dissemination of information ... on economic, social, regulatory, and practical aspects of a variety of topics, including :.. workers in the informal sector ..." | |
| 120 | Labour Information and Statistics |
| 120.3 | Statistics sub-programme |
| 120.32 Development of new statistical tools (including "informal sector employment) | |
| 140 | Interdepartmental Projects |
| 140.3 | Inter-departmental project on the informal sector - to include
a) fact-finding and data collection, b) analysis and policy assessment, c) policy dialogue, and d) operational assistance |